I think shields would lessen the damage and probably take less damage to themselves from arrows, so they wont explode but you still take damage, thatd be interesting or alternatively dont be there to get shot, you could hide behind your horse.

I cant wait for this, I liked playing a dragoon in warband but crossbows dont quite cut it with me. I wonder if you can use the 4 inventory slots like this: Gun, Gun, Gun, bag of bullets. Bang, bang, bang, run away to reload

Rip off. Most of what has been implemented in this "Stand-Alone Expansion" (Otherwise known as an excuse to charge full price again), was implemented via mods in the very first Mount and Blade. Hell all the stuff in this "Stand-Alone Expansion" are almost exactly the same as said mods.

Its BS. I was a big fan of taleworlds, I purchased their game back in the early beta's and supported them through the testing process, only to get gibbed later. This is just a mod package. It's not worth the price and how they present it as being their own is lame.

The mods are where it's at in Mount and Blade. My favorite is the one based off of the Berserk manga.

It even follows the story pretty faithfully. It's got everything in it, the soundtrack from the anime, soldiers of differing heights, 10 foot tall ogres, even the whole eclipse god hand event. Not sure if it works with War Bands yet though.

OH MY GOD YES!I AM SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED FOR THIS, AS EXPRESSED MY MY INCORRECT AND UNNECESSARY USAGE OF CAPITALIZED LETTERS.Yeah. Very excited. Although, I haven't played in a while, so I got to prepare for this new standalone.

Selvec:Rip off. Most of what has been implemented in this "Stand-Alone Expansion" (Otherwise known as an excuse to charge full price again), was implemented via mods in the very first Mount and Blade. Hell all the stuff in this "Stand-Alone Expansion" are almost exactly the same as said mods.

Its BS. I was a big fan of taleworlds, I purchased their game back in the early beta's and supported them through the testing process, only to get gibbed later. This is just a mod package. It's not worth the price and how they present it as being their own is lame.

Seriously. Screw them.

Your forgetting Warbands also had multiplayer, and dedicated multiplayer servers. It was also the first time it was released on Steam. It wasn't so much an expansion for old players but a new game for new players. And if you bought the game back in beta there's no way you paid more than twenty dollars for it so you can't be that ripped off. If this was a sixty dollar game I'd probably agree with you but it's never been that expensive.

Taluien:Never touched the multiplayer part of M&B, but the singleplayer gave me several "WTF sunlight already?!" moments. I played through several nights with it without realizing. I think the manifold of possible options is what makes the game stand out and above all those "Must look pretty"-games. I could be a merchant. A knight out for tourneys. A thief. An Evil Overlord that obeys the Evil Overlord List (as far as it is possible, darned enemy Nobles and their inbuilt invulnerability plus escape artist training). Or maybe an adventurer. A loyal noble of one side. I even reenacted the freaking Golden Horde. This freedom of choice, and yes, the freedom to fail miserably and get kicked so hard to the ground that I have nothing left, is what will bring me back to it again and again. Sure, there is no "real" story in Warband (which is why I find the idea of factionbased overarching storys one can take part in great), but then again, there doesn't have to be. The story is what my mind creates. It's a bit like painting a picture for me, the game is the canvas and the palette, but my mind is the brush, creating whatever story I wish to tell to myself.

For me, it's a great experience that not many games have made possible for me.

Agree, very much agree. That is why I still play.

The funny thing is the warband 1755 mod looks like its alot better then the expansion their releasing.

Darkside360:Will probably give it a go when the Brytenwalda mod is added to it.

Best mod ever.

You ,my good sir, need to try Prophesy of Pendor. Gives Brytenwalda a run for its money. Although both are excellent mods.

OniaPL:I really enjoyed the original Mount and Blade, and I wasted hours and hours of time with it (and with it's excellent mods!), but the fact that they release expansion packs for which they charge the price of a brand new game is really... criminal, in my opinion.

Yeah but full price for a mount and blade game is 20$, hardly a hefty sum, and Steam has sales on the games every few months so you can usually get it for 10.

gostlyfantom:I cannot fucking wait, a day one purchase for sure... and did I see kicking in there?

You can already kick in Warband.Honestly, anyone who frequents the TW forums knows that this has been coming out for a long time; and is also probably pretty cheesed about it. Adding very common place things in many mods a new game does not make. As Orcus said, those mods are great(though none of them offer gunpowder as I recall; although I wholeheartedly recommend PoP with a fervor-- it has to be one of the best _games_ I have ever played).Addressing the issue of gundpowder balance to people who have never played a Warband mod with guns in it:It's a different field entirely, and isn't unbalanced assuming the devs didn't screw it up(considering how old Fire and Sword is, I assume it's fairly balanced). Many of the multiplayer mods that have gunpowder in them are simply that, shoot offs with the occasional like one faction with horse archers machine gunning the slower reload rifleman. But you also get horseman running down rifleman as they reload or dodging fire and coming in to kill with a well placed Sabre blow. It's just a different kind of action-- and it's definitely not something to be paid for when community mod developers have been doing it for a long time and have been doing it well for about the same amount of time. Nothing new has been added so far as I know; nothing at all.

Yeah but full price for a mount and blade game is 20$, hardly a hefty sum, and Steam has sales on the games every few months so you can usually get it for 10.

I paid 20 for the original, and then they wanted 40 for Warband. They cut off all support and patching for the original. Warband added multiplayer and 1 new faction+1/8 more map. Nothing the mods couldn't do.

I'll pass. I'm not a huge fan of the gunpowder era, plus the fact that the fictitious setting of regular Mount and Blade (original and Warband) was part of the appeal. I'm not against games set in history, but M&B is one of those games which didn't need a historical basis.

I'm going to sound old, but Mount and Blade's mod community was best when the game was at version .808. It was probably the first really stable version of the beta that had most of the games elements in it and it wasn't updated for a very long time, months, possibly a year. The originality of those early was amazing and has yet to be matched.

Stuff like Pirates with it's actually ship to ship combat with cannons and swinging on ropes (shame it was so buggy). Paelolithic mod with it's new map, textures and weapons that made slaughtering neanderthals so darn fun. For guns there was Liberty or Death (American revolution), Brother versus Brother (American Civil War) or Age of Descent (Crude guns and ZOMBIES!). Battle for scilily that was so innovative they hired the guy who did it, it's what first introduced fiefdoms. Then there was The Last Days, that was probably the best mod ever made, it completely changed the setting to Middle earths and implemented incredibly faithful soldiers and equipment from all the sides invovled. Fighting an actuall troll (well Olog Hai) when the scream of Nazgul is heard overhead was amazing. These are just a few of the mods that were out there, sure they were buggy and incomplete, but it felt like every week there was a fresh new idea to try out.

OniaPL:I paid 20 for the original, and then they wanted 40 for Warband. They cut off all support and patching for the original. Warband added multiplayer and 1 new faction+1/8 more map. Nothing the mods couldn't do.

And a diplomacy system that allows you to make yourself a king. Also overalled textures for a lot of thing that's make the game plain, not ugly.

The Warband versus original thing is a conundrum, I certainly feel Warband is obviously deserving of it's price, it's a far superior game (from someone who started playing the original around .6 up to it's current version). But it is pretty much just an updated version of the original.

But I will say that Taleworlds is prety generous with the keys you get (when go from the site directly not steam), I've installed both games on so many different computers over the years.

I imagine much in the same way you were forced to tackle Rhodok Sharpshooters and their damned siege crossbows, might as well have been firearms. You either don't charge headlong into them or you let other soldiers engage them first.

Huh.

I never encountered any weapon in Warband that couldn't be stopped by a decent shield.

Then again, I never got round to picking fights with the Rhodoks.

They're like friggin' artillery batteries. A few times, I've had shields give out on my first charge against them.

As a Nord-face I am quite anxious to get my hands on the new installment!I think the firearms will not be that much of a balance-breaker (seeing as how in the early 15th-16th century swords were still being used along with muskets) though I think it will change the gameplay quite a bit tbh.Overall though I will play it, probably for hundreds of hours, then I will play the mods, which add a few hundreds of hours more; and before I know it I will be in the same situation I was last time I stopped playing M&B.Yay for carpal-tunnel!

I still have yet to finish Warband as I've recently updated the Blood and Steel mod (my all-time favorite mod). Still chugging through it as a barbarian bandit on moderate difficulty, so I might not buy the game until I've conquered all of Calradia.

Echo136:I still cant understand why this game is so fun. I played the demo, and it looks like it was made back in 2001. The game was soooo boring and inferior.

Than you must not enjoy the thrill of a heavy cavalry charge, breaking the line of enemy spear men that block your way, cutting down archers as they try to flee the battle and lancing enemy cavalrymen out of the saddle.

Plus MandB looks much better than most of the games that came out in 2001.